Magsaysay Awardee Sandeep Pandey visits Bakul

[C Shambu Prasad]

You all were of course there before the Magsaysay award winner. Do carry the word around and the spirit of volunteerism wherever you are.

Shambu

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sujit Mahapatra <suj...@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 12:25 PM
Subject: Magsaysay Awardee Sandeep Pandey visits Bakul
To: ba...@yahoogroups.com

Dear friends

Yesterday was a great day. Sandeep Pandey, one of the most respected social activists in India visited Bakul. Dr. Pandey, as all of you would know, was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2002. A co-founder of Asha for Education, he also leads the National Alliance of People's Movements at present. 

He was in Bhubaneswar for a meeting. Unfortunately, though I got to hear of it, I could not attend. But then he heard about Bakul from people who attended the Meeting and interacted with him. I must thank Jyoti bhai in particular for this. And then lo and behold, in the evening, Jyoti bhai's colleague from East Coast Railways, Mr Pramod Choudhury brought Dr. Pandey down to the library.

Dr. Pandey listened patiently to my ideas on what we are trying to do. He agreed with them and said that they had also come to the conclusion that to win the trust of people, one had to avoid institutional funding. He loved the interiors of teh library and the books prepared by children. 

He said that he wanted to send his team of volunteers working with children in Uttar Pradesh to come and visit Bakul and learn from the experiments here. Before leaving, he wrote a few words in our Guest Book.

He wrote, "Bakul library is a very innovative and commendable effort by Sujit and team. Such spirit of volunteerism will be the seed for genuine social change. This experiment is also replicable and must be emulated by concerned citizens everywhere. Best wishes for its future. Love, Sandeep"

That is one of the greatest compliments we have got of course.

Meanwhile, yesterday, there was another news (literally I mean :)) Sambad, one of the leading dailies in Oriya, carried a Special Feature on Bakul in its Sunday Magazine. The internet link to the story (without the images) is 

http://www.orissasambad.com/news_article.php?id=17229

I must thank Mr. Sandip Dasverma for sending me this link (which was forwarded to him by another person who had been hearing of Bakul from Sandip Mausa). Sandip Mausa as many of you would know is one of the most active and aggressive (I must say) members of the Oriya community in the US, trying to mobilize support for developmental works in Orissa. He has been constantly trying to mobilize people to replicate Bakul across the state, and he is joined now by the equally active and aggressive Nishikanta, who only yesterday, made a presentation on Bakul at the Orissa Society of New England, to get them to set up libraries in their villages or home towns.

Hope we live up to the expectations and the challenges.

Sujit

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Dr. C Shambu Prasad
Associate Professor,
Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar
Ph: +91-674-3983740 (o) 876 (r) 2302580 (r) 2300995 (Fax)
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